


Angels is green

by Salchat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Charcoal, Christmas, Fanart, Fog, Gen, Historical, London, Poverty, Victorian, Wraith (Stargate), Wraith Culture (Stargate), Wraith Feeding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:46:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28171896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salchat/pseuds/Salchat
Summary: A small slice of Todd's history, as a gift to all my friends in the Hivemind with thanks for their wonderful variety of wraithiness."Of course, he had been there before, to that planet they called Earth..."With art.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 7
Collections: Merry Wraithmas





	Angels is green

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Readers,  
> This is a little one shot that wouldn't leave me alone, even though I'm supposed to be finishing my novel-length Nanowrimo story.  
> An image of Todd dressed as a Victorian gentleman has been floating around in my head for a while and then a simple idea joined it and a flurry of typing and charcoaling was the result. I hope you enjoy it, and for those that celebrate, I hope you have a very 'Merry Christmas'!  
> Salchat

Of course, he had been there before, to that planet they called Earth. He had been there before they returned to his galaxy, those brave few, unaware of the dangers they would wake.

The first time was when he was very young and the small ones had come across him in his time of testing, on the planet where his hive had left him, alone and feral and near the point of starvation, not having had the courage to hunt and to feed. They had taken him to their ship and somehow nourished him and studied him in their detached yet compassionate manner, their huge, inscrutable black eyes blinking with impartial curiosity.

Perhaps they had regarded him as a pet, for he had run wild about their ship, and, perhaps also they had underestimated his intellect, because he had successfully manipulated their technology and managed to beam himself down to the surface of a planet. He had spent a strange day communing with the odd inhabitants. They were definitely human, their skins brown and soft and without the sheen of moisture that protected the skin of wraithkind, but their speech was crude and their manner of living primitive in the extreme. He felt no urge to feed, presumably due to the small ones’ mysterious replenishing of his cells. So he made himself known to the humans and they, having no knowledge that he might be dangerous, played with him happily enough; simple games involving running along the sands of their seaside home and splashing in the waves.

The small grey ones had found him, blinked and twittered at him amiably, behaved in a similarly indulgent manner toward the primitive humans, and taken him back to their ship. They had eventually returned him to the planet where they had found him and at last his hunger had driven him to feed and he had taken his place as a full adult member of the hive.

The second time was much, much more recent, although still long before the lifetime of any of the humans who had repopulated Atlantis.

He had found an Ancient ship. He had made it work. He had travelled. And, the ship’s hyperdrive having, at best, one or two journeys left in its decaying circuits, he had searched the database and found that far off planet of his youth. That it was in a different galaxy had surprised him, but, not one to brook a challenge, he had directed the ship to take him there, had landed undetected, in a remote spot, and set out to explore.

The humans had advanced. They had tainted the air with the bitter scent of fossil fuels, they had grown in number and clustered into cities of dark and dirty streets that reeked of poverty and disease. They were no longer the simple, playful creatures that he had known, but separated themselves into those who worked long and hard and ate little and those who dressed well and ate much and apparently lived solely to be entertained.

The one that had, soon after joining the hive, been given the name ‘He who goes far’ or ‘He who finds a way’ or simply ‘Wayfarer,’ quickly realised that the overcrowded streets of a huge and often noisome and fog-bound city were excellent feeding grounds and, moreover, that he needed to do very little to blend into such pleasantly gloomy surroundings. All he required was a suit of clothes; an elegant coat or a many-layered cape; a hat such as might be worn by a gentleman of the time, or one who aspired to be a gentleman; and perhaps a tall cane and a handkerchief to complete the ensemble. These things were easily acquired in the usual course of a night’s feeding. 

Thus attired, Wayfarer found that he had no difficulty at all in passing for a normal human, because there was such a wonderful variety of what was regarded as normal in this place of transience. There were constant arrivals of tall wooden ships, from which all manner of humans came forth, emanating through scent and taste and mind-sight their tantalising glimpses of desert-heat, ice-cold, jungle-rich, mountain-clear; so many impressions that, strolling among the wooden piers and stagings of the docks, Wayfarer nearly reeled from such life-rich promise.

And, though green skin, a spiracled countenance, pointed teeth and a feeding slit might have set him apart even amid such a myriad of individuals, the fact that disfiguring disease was rife also worked to his advantage. It galled Wayfarer to be thought of as disfigured when his form, amongst his own kind, was considered decidedly pleasing, but expedience was everything in such a situation and he was, after all, glad to be able to hide in plain sight. When glances or outright gasps of horror followed him down a filthy alley, he merely shrugged his shoulders in the manner of the locals and continued on his way.

The city and its great river teemed with life during the day and scarcely less so at night. The humans swarmed the streets along with their animal or hand-drawn conveyances and swarmed the river in their little floating craft, and their business of buying and selling, gossiping and jeering, posturing and posing, living and dying took place in plenitude and abandon wherever and whenever they swarmed. Wayfarer gloried in the abundance.

He loved best the narrow streets where houses overhung their boundaries and light was a rare commodity and he walked freely among them, becoming a familiar figure to the inhabitants, from the children who played amongst the filth to the watchman who tipped his hat warily in the blackest hours of the night. 

And Wayfarer observed that even in such poverty and deprivation there was often an undaunted spirit, a camaraderie of squalor, that led cross-shawled women to pass a shared bottle from gap-toothed mouth to wizened, grasping hand while calling out their raucous cries to tempt a passing stranger to the delights of their ravaged bodies. Wayfarer would tip his hat at their earthy humour and greet their mock-refined responses with a hissing acknowledgement, leaving shrieks of alcohol-roughened laughter and broad winks and gestures in his wake.

The men brawling outside the public houses, the women scrubbing their doorsteps in a vain attempt to stave off the tide of dirt, all lived and laboured in common hardship, their solidarity as thick in the air as the blanketing fog.

But when that great, grey swathe slid up from the broad bends of the river and covered the city, sometimes for days at a time, there were dark deeds done in its choking miasma by those minds pushed too hard by the cruelties of life. Wayfarer’s subtle stealth had no need of the fog’s heavy, grey cloak but he found himself venturing forth from his comfortable lodging more frequently than usual, prowling the alleys where hurried footsteps echoed over the damp cobbles, where yellow gas lamps barely penetrated the gloom. Scents hung on the air, trailing behind tattered threads of mind-sight; scents of hunger and grief, lust and passion, fear and pursuit, and the sharp bitter tang of sudden, slashing violence. He followed the dreadful spoor and rid the city of those who would prey on their own kind, those who would kill not for the gain of a few coins or trinkets that might feed themselves or their family, but for the bloody joy of the taking of life, the perverted ecstasy that hung in the air around their slain victims as thickly as the enveloping fog. Such distorted figures of humanity found themselves the victims and were taken and given swift judgement.

It snowed and those without shelter died and the little barefooted children called out to Wayfarer in their hoarse voices, by turns false with bravado and then coaxing with a deep and true hunger. Sometimes he would flick them a coin or two, because, he told himself, perhaps he would have need of their lives when his own hunger was great.

And once, strolling, cane in hand, down a dark, filthy alley, he was presented with an opportunity; an easy kill, a small morsel to stave off his growing need until nighttime brought greater opportunities.

The snow lay dirty and grey, the cobbles slick with grease and wet filth, and a scattered flock of bony, ragged children hurtled by, surrounding Wayfarer briefly, darting beneath his cane like silver fish. One fell, but the others, swifter, had passed on and did not heed their fallen hive-mate. The child picked himself up slowly, cursing like the man he would almost certainly never become; damning the snow and the cold and above all, condemning his own infirmity. Wayfarer observed as the boy picked up a bent stick, padded at one end with a wrapping of rags. He fitted it under his arm and leant heavily, his breath rasping in and out, releasing the vapour of his diseased lungs into the freezing air. The child would surely not last the winter. And yet his small life force might serve as a piquant appetizer to the night’s pleasure.

The boy raised red-rimmed eyes in a pale, gaunt face. “Spare a penny guv’nor?”

Wayfarer rotated the cane in his long fingers, as if to screw it between the cobbles. His feeding hand itched.

“Spare a ha’penny? A farthing? For Christmas, guv’nor? For the little babby Jesus?” The child’s voice was stronger than his emaciated frame, the curl of his lips a valiant attempt at winning humour.

“I will spare you what I have if you approach.”

The boy pulled himself up straight and contrived to fold his arms across his narrow chest while retaining a grip on the crutch. “What’s your game, then, Mister? I ain’t got nuffin for the likes o’ you to be a-thieving.”

“I am no thief. I am merely curious and my sight is poor. I would see the face of the one on whom I would bestow a gift.” Fingers of fog crept up the alley, carrying with them the scent of the river and the stench of the tanneries.

The boy tipped his tattered cap further back on his head and looked directly into Wayfarer’s eyes. “If you ask me, it’s a good thing you don’t see so well, with a phiz like that. I bet you’d crack a mirror.”

Wayfarer added his hissing laugh to the boy’s rasping bray, not grudging the child his crude jest. He held out his hand, his fingers crooked. “Come.” He let a faint imperative drift forth from his mind.

“Alright then, I ain’t afeard.” The boy’s scent belied his words, but he thrust out his chest, took a firm grip on his crutch and hobbled boldly forward.

His cry, as Wayfarer’s fingers grasped the front of his ragged jacket, was easily stifled by a quick suppressing touch of the wraith’s mind. Wayfarer tore the thin shirt open, adjusted his grip and applied his feeding hand over the bony ridge of the child’s sternum, enfolding the small, limp form within the wings of his cape. It was, after all, daylight, even though it would be easy to stir ghosts within the fog to mislead any passers by.

The child began to struggle as the barbs penetrated his flesh, but his feeble attempts were no challenge, nor even a minor inconvenience to Wayfarer. Then the struggles ceased. The wraith sighed, a long, sibilant sigh of satisfaction.

He set the small body down on the cobbles, opened his cape wide, like a set of double doors and stepped back.

The child shuddered once all over and then was still. 

And then the boy’s wondering eyes travelled from his dirty, bare feet, planted squarely amid the grey slush, up over his two healthy legs, and his lungs expanded and contracted smoothly, without a whisper of a rasp. His chin tipped back so that his round-cheeked, glowing face mirrored the wraith’s in a strange symmetry and his mouth fell open, the breaths in his newly-healed lungs coming quick and urgent. 

Would he speak? Would he thank his saviour? Would he scream in primitive incomprehension?

“I reckon the vicar got it wrong,” he said.

Wayfarer, who would later be called Todd, raised an eyebrow.

“All wrong,” whispered the child.

“How so?”

The boy swallowed, licked his lips and took a step back. “‘Cos they ain’t white and shining with big fevvery wings.” He shook his head, a smile slowly forming. “Angels is green.” 

He spun around on his strong legs and jumped in the air, a young, wild human animal full of life and joy. Then he ran, whooping and laughing, stumbling and righting himself, born a cripple and suddenly with a healthy unfamiliar body.

The fog swirled and the boy was gone.

Wayfarer examined his thoughts. Why had he spared the child? Why did he take only those who made victims of their own kind? Why, also, did he linger here, far, far from hive-mind and queen and home? 

Perhaps he would not stay much longer. Perhaps he would return to that Ancient hulk, coax it to one more journey through the vast emptiness and then destroy it and all it contained.

And this place would remain, for these humans to grow and progress as they would, to fight amongst themselves with no great enemy from the stars, to develop and perhaps one day to strike out into the stars themselves.

The fog thickened and darkened and figures moved within, both real and phantom. Footsteps and the tap of a cane echoed off the high walls and fluttered like shadows of sound, slowly diminishing into the gloom. 

And a few of those short human lifetimes later, as the sun’s rays touched the far side of that world they called Earth, Wayfarer was there again to see a sweeping bridge golden in the dawn light and a great bay lined with dwellings and industry. He recalled the boy who had named him angel and his feeding hand itched to deal out summary judgement. Because here, there were lives; many, many lives and some of those with black hearts whose minds declared their blackness to his questing tendrils of thought. And perhaps there would be just a few, a very fortunate few, who would earn this green angel’s blessing.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/190544196@N08/50736537517/in/dateposted-public/)


End file.
